Well folks, just over a week ago me and my girlfriend decided to drive up to San Francisco and get ourselves some tattoos. For me, it's my first. I've entertained the thought of getting a tattoo for years now. Nothing big or complicated, just something small. So I decided to show my dedication to my favorite band by getting the above pictured VNV Nation logo imprinted on my right shoulder. I'm not going to lie, getting a tattoo does sting, but it wasn't as painful as I thought it was going to be. We were at Mom's Body Shop on Haight Street, a pretty good place to get a first tattoo I must say. The artist, Phil, showed me his first tattoo which was of one of his favorite bands - Devo. I have to say, even though the tattoo is covered by my sleeve 90% of the time I still feel kind of like a badass. Is it time for me to head off to the nearest biker bar?
Sorting through my mp3 collection recently I came across "We Built this City" by Starship (Jefferson?). I had a hazy recollection of the music video that went along with it so I fired up youtube and took a look. Boy, was I rewarded with a gem. Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we've found the Worst Music Video of All Time.
Before rushing to the Cosmic American to share my thoughts though, I did a little research. Conveniently, Wikipedia has a whole entry on the song, and it looks like others share the same opinion. In 2004 Blender magazine named it the worst song of all time with editor Craig Marks saying the song "seems to inspire the most virulent feelings of outrage. It purports to be anti-commercial but reeks of 80s corporate-rock commercialism."
Ok, but I'm really just talking about the video. It's just so bad. I mean, I grew up watching loads of MTV, and I remember lots of silly, poorly done videos. But this one is just so awful. Sure, the style of clothing has changed, and it's pretty obvious from the first few seconds of watching that the video is dated. But the 80s hair and stylings are the least of your worries once the video gets going.
First there's the montage of people's faces looking thoughtful and contemplative. Why are they looking so stern while lost in their innermost reflections? Why? Because they're all looking at the Lincoln Memorial of course! Now, I wasn't aware that Lincoln built this city, or country, on rock and roll. Actually, I'm pretty sure he didn't found much at all. And I'm damn 100% sure he didn't listen to rock and roll.
But then, what follows afterwards! I'm just going to call it folks, it's the MOST cringe-worthy moment in music video history of ALL TIME. As our oh-so-80s rebel protagonists look on in adoration at Lincoln, the statue comes to life, raises his fist, and sings the chorus! It's just so, so awful. Even in 1985 this scene must have been perceived as awful. Words can't honestly express how truly awful it is. Not only that but it's creepy as hell.
The video just proceeds to be awful from there on out. Grace Slick sings about corporations and how annoying it is that they're constantly changing their names (boohoo!), all set to the backdrop of... Vegas casinos?! I wonder if the band realized the irony in these lyrics, as Starship are well known for having changed their name multiple times. Then a bunch of people are running away from giant tumbling dice. Why? I guess those dice represent those pesky corporations and their pesky habit of changing their names.
Then there's the radio announcer part during the bridge. I think it's there to give some 'street-cred' to the band, but if you listen to what the announcer says it makes little sense. He starts with "looking out over the Golden Gate Bridge on another gorgeous sunny Saturday." Ok, that sounds pretty good. Then: "and I'm seeing that bumper-to-bumper traffic." Huh? If you're trying to get the the radio guy to hippen-up the song, do you really want him talking about bumper-to-bumper traffic? How about something like "and there's no traffic today!" My reaction to this part is something like "Bumper-bumper traffic?? Oh well, I'll just stay in today and let someone else build this city."
During the next sequence we see a montage of skyscrapers pop-up in the background as the band plays. Hey look, there's the Chrysler building! And the World Trade Center, soooo rock and roll!!
And that's pretty much it. The whole thing is just so bad that I can barely watch. The song was already bad enough, but then someone must have said "Hey, let's make an equally atrocious video!" And one last thing, just why is Marconi playing the mamba?
The ladyfriend and I went to see Bruno this past Saturday. Has anyone else seen it yet? I knew it was going to be pretty outrageous, a "Hard R" as Ebert called it. Well I was pleasantly surprised to find out what a hard R meant. There are penises within the first five minutes of the film. I thought that was NC-17 stuff. Anyways, I was already familiar with the character of Bruno from Da Ali G show days. Back then Bruno was there to satirize the vacuousness of the fashion industry - like the one interview where he asks some employee at a high-end Rodeo Drive clothing store what celebrities shop there. When the employee can't name anyone terribly interesting Bruno stops filming and asks the guy to mention some bigger names, like Britney or J-Lo. They begin filming again and the employee changes his story, stating that Britney, etc. are all regular patrons. Funny stuff.
Unfortunately the film "Brüno" wants to deal more with (homo) sexuality. While I'm not against exposing people's bigotry and ignorance towards the subject, I was hoping for more of the old Bruno. Besides a slight bit at the beginning where Bruno hilariously manages to make it onto a fashion runway in Milan, there's really not much about fashion at all. Instead it's all sex-sex-sex. There's funny bits at the beginning where there's some obviously faux sexual acts going on, but later there's a few scenes with some very real sex going on, with just the tiniest bit of black censor bars editing out the naughty bits. While none of this made me feel uncomfortable, I was just more pretty astounded that they could get away with this with just an R. It was like watching the end of the Brown Bunny all over again.
There are a few fairly memorable bits, like when Bruno is naming a bunch of celebrities and Germanizing their names (my favorite - Will Smith becomes "Wilhelm Schmidt"), or when Bruno brings out his adopted black baby on a talk show dominated by an all black audience. Then the movie ends with a closing song wherein somehow Sascha Baron Cohen, I mean Bruno, has managed to wrangle up the biggest talents from the British and Emerald isles to sing a song with him, somehow even getting one of LE's favorite artists to sing a line about "anal bleaching". How they got that poor man to do that I have no idea. All in all, not as good as Borat, but it still has its moments.
I saw the headlines, "Barrack Comment Offends Rednecks," "Obama Hates Real Americans," and "Infant Faints After Hearing Obama on Evening News." I expected to find some charged racial remark or perhaps something about free trade. Nope, what I got was:
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
My immediate reaction? That statement is TRUE!
Sure, he could have picked something nicer than "cling" to be political, but don't we have enough political nonsense in this campaign already? Hearing Barrack say something 1) true, 2) important, and 3) that needs to be said makes me think more of him, not less. But then maybe that's because I'm an evil big city Californian (the worst of the worst). Even though I'm not from the city. Even though all the elitist rich farmers and real estate developers (increasingly the same thing now that small farmers have disappeared) in my home town vote Republican and my Democrat father taught me to shoot a gun and my Democrat grandmother reads the bible while my atheist Republican grandfather rants about the evils of religion. Frustration is leading to run on sentences so I'll stop soon.
One thing I'd like to note - us California suburbanites make fun of rural and urban folks equally. We make fun of militia nuts in Reading and spoiled faux-idealists in San Francisco. Everyone makes fun of LA, and LA makes fun of everyone else. "Real" Americans are no more likely to know how to take care of a farm than they are to get a BMW for their 16th birthday. Jefferson's ideal died 100 years ago - big business, by way of "the free market," killed it.
